Louis Huth

Louis Huth (22 March 1821 – 12 February 1905), was a British company director and merchant banker. He was a partner in Frederick Huth & Co, the merchant bank established by his father. Huth and his wife, Helen Huth (1837-1924), were significant patrons of the arts, not only possessing a large number of paintings by some of the greatest British artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but also commissioning works from contemporary artists. Their collection included paintings by artists of the Aesthetic and Symbolist movements, such as James McNeill Whistler RA (1834–1903) and G. F. Watts OM RA (1817 –1904), by both of whom Helen Huth was portrayed in important paintings. Huth, whose collecting extended to antique porcelain, was also a leading influence on the activities of one of the greatest art collectors and connoisseurs of the late Victorian era and the Edwardian years, George Salting (1835-1909), who ultimately left his outstanding collection of art to the British nation. Early life and business career Louis Huth was born at Finsbury in London, the son of Frederick Huth (1774–1864), a merchant and merchant banker born in Germany, who 'came of very humble origins, the son of a soldier [without rank], with only his intelligence and appetite for hard work to single him out from other poor boys at the bottom of the social heap in the small village of Harsefeld in the Electorate of Hanover.' After an apprenticeship to a Spanish merchant in Hamburg, Huth eventually established a business in Corunna, Spain, where he met his wife, an orphan believed to be the daughter of a prominent member of the Spanish Royal court. In 1809, following the invasion of Spain by France, Frederick and his wife and children emigrated to England from Spain and established the family merchant house in London, Frederick Huth & Co. By 1829 Huth had become the banker and financial adviser to the Spanish Queen, Maria Christiana, later Queen Regent, and in due course became financial agent for the Spanish government, for which Huth was rewarded with a knighthood by the Spanish crown.